Dotcom 'product of a sexist culture'

The Internet Party's gender issues spokeswoman says party
founder Kim Dotcom is "a product of a sexist culture which we
need to remedy".

Dr Pani Farvid, an Iranian-born psychologist at AUT, proudly
told a women's election forum in Auckland last night that the
Internet Party was "a feminist party".

"The urgent task of advocating genuine gender equality is one
of our top priorities," she declared.

But she was cut short when a questioner, Daily Blog blogger
Chloe King, asked how she reconciled her claim with a Twitter
exchange on July 22 in which Kim Dotcom tweeted: "Hi, I'm
Batman. I mean Bruce. Shit. **kills hooker**." He deleted the
post the same day, explaining on Twitter that party leader
Laila Harre had told him to.

Ms King said the joke was an example of "toxic masculinity"
and "sexist language that feeds into rape culture and
normalises violence against women".

Dr Farvid agreed, and said she had talked to Dotcom about the
tweet.

"Kim is a product of our Western culture," she said. "He has
an unfortunate sense of humour. When he does things that are
inappropriate, I message him and say, 'Kim, that is not
appropriate.'

"He is not perfect. He is not the party, he's the founder,
but we are a feminist party. He has apologised himself, I'm
not excusing him, that sort of thing is not OK, absolutely.
He just doesn't know any better and he should."

She agreed with Ms King that New Zealanders needed to "change
the way we raise boys" to teach all children that they could
be "the person that you want to be", rather than having to
fit into cultural roles of strong men or beautiful women.

Afterwards she said she joined the Internet Party because "in
my 15 years of voting age it's the first party that actually
wants to bring radical change".

"Sometimes we need someone like Kim to get rid of what we
actually have," she said.

"We are educating him, but he is the product of a sexist
culture which we need to remedy. He is completely open to
being educated."